What is biblical “musing,” anyway? It’s certainly not exposition in the tightest sense of the term, but rather more like a meditative exploration of biblical texts at the periphery of what the text seems to suggest. If exposition is the wine, musing is like its bouquet. You live and take your stand on doctrinal truths that are unmistakably solid and clear. Musings? Not so much, but they do involve taking Hebrew meditative literature seriously. You explore and piece things together as best you can. What you lose in terms of certainty, you gain in terms of potential joy of mental and spiritual discovery. Doctrinal Orthodoxy is gladly received. Meditative insights are expectantly chased. It’s about the hunt, the intrigue of curiosity and the joy of hard work and eventual achievement. We’re changed not only by receiving God’s truth. We’re transformed by this kind of chase.

But that said…

It’s not as though there isn’t a tight discipline involved in musing. We meditate over biblical facts. Textual facts. And this means that good musing is rooted in substantive work, not idle fantasy. It’s the kind of work that merely assumes that the author neither “wastes nor wants” with his text. Everything there is needed, and nothing needed is missing (although, of course, plenty is missing, i.e. profoundly suggested). And perhaps most importantly, everything is exactly where it should be. Your work is to take the text as seriously as possible, in order to tease out the author’s message and intentions as far as possible. The best case scenario (per impossible) is to successfully explain in some way why every detail belongs in the text.

In general, then, this is the essence of the chase:

1. Duly note every term in the work (or at least those that can be managed): Take note that they are there. List them all. Tally the total times each prominent term appears. Look for any order and arrangement. Consider how they contribute individually or collectively to any significant themes or the central message of the work. [Note: As you become more familiar with your most important terms, it’s essential to use helps like the Blue Letter Bible app to root your observations in the original languages– it’s easier than you think.]
2. Read meditatively. Read every verse through the lens of every other verse in the work. Likewise consider every term and theme in light of every other term and theme. This means lots and lots of s-l-o-w reading with many pauses. It also means you read with pen and paper. These are non-negotiable unless you’re certifiably brilliant–not smart. Brilliant.
3. Read expansively. Read every verse in light of 1) all other narrative accounts in the OT, and 2) all other books and themes of the Bible.
4. Meditate day and night. You don’t always read: You chomp-chomp the text at your leisure. You slowly cook the details into a thick, unified mixture.

Or course this is the ideal. But as an ideal or “north star” it can be the path that we trek in order to eventually read the Scriptures reflexively over the years of our life. This is a lifelong process of development, habituation, and learning. It is a life of deep mental and spiritual delight, yielding flourishing fruit.

Jonah. Jonah. Jonah. So let’s jump into Jonah and see how some of this works. I suggested before that the book highlights four particular terms: Great, bad, fear, and appoint- gadol, ra, yare, and mana, respectively.

I am still convinced that all of these are extremely important terms, but I’ve done some meditative reading and pondering since then, and my pondering has happily led me in some other directions. By taking and running with those initial insights, I found new paths for exploration (I think this is the norm of what we should expect). We’ll eventually offer some observations on all those terms above, but let me start as follows.

If we slow down and pause to look merely at the opening verses of Jonah (1:1-2), three terms seem to stand out: gadol, ra, and qara (to cry out). It just so happens that these three terms are (with two noteworthy exceptions!) mentioned the most times in the book: Gadol = 17 times; Ra = 9 times; Qara = 8. We immediately can’t help but ask: Is this book about greatness, bad, and crying out?

Well, gadol has to be somewhere in the mix as a major theme. It’s used in the first and last statements from God (1:2 and 4:10-11), which also means the book basically begins and ends with gadol. It can be found in every chapter except chapter 2 and Jonah’s prayer. Parenthetically: Does Jonah not understand greatness in some sense? Is it not a part of his functioning vocabulary– specially in a book steeped in its use? As far as I can tell gadol is explicitly used of everyone or anything in the book with one great exception. Hmm…

God hurls a gadol wind. The storm is then understandably gadol. The sailors are gadol frightened– not once, but twice. God’s appointed fish is gadol. Nineveh is not only gadol, but exceedingly gadol (very provocatively put, as we will see). The people of Nineveh from small to gadol repent. The king and his nobles (gadolim) send a proclamation to repent. The book ends with the LORD chiding Jonah: “You had compassion on a plant you didn’t cause to grow (to make gadol)… and should I not have compassion on Nineveh that gadol city? The first, central, and last use of gadol all refer to Nineveh. Hmm again…

That said, gadol is actually used in reference to Jonah three times. It turns out that he does know something about gadol in some sense. He is a kind of gadol tempest in a tea pot– only in a much more seriously dangerous sense.

Moving on, we can do the same thing with Ra and Qara. Ra is used 9 times throughout the book, although in English it’s difficult to see that this is so. It has an inherent range of meaning provoking the following English translations: evil, bad, calamity, displeasure, and discomfort. But that said, we should not forget that they are all Ra in the text. Provocatively Ra. It’s central use is also provocative. It’s in Jonah 3:10 (again that pivotal verse contrasting words and deeds) where in this case Jonah uses the homonym (“to see”) while juxtaposing the two central meanings of the term. It sounds something like this: “When God ra’a-ed their deeds, that they turned from their ra way, then God relented concerning the ra which He had declared He would bring upon hem. And He did not do it.”

Qara is used 8 times throughout the text (10 times if we soften things to include its near synonym, za’aq). NOTE: It’s used almost exclusively by the pagans: on the one hand, both the captain and the sailors qara. Jonah by contrast is admonished by the pagan captain to qara in case his God might care. Jonah remains silent. He refuses to qara. On the flip side of the book (chapters 3-4) the Ninevites either qara to God or are commanded to do so 5 times. Jonah watches and burns, but never qara-s here either. There is only one time in the entire book that Jonah “qara-s” to God. It’s in 2:2 at the beginning of his prayer. He qara-s to God as he plunges down towards his obvious, eminent death. He should know something about qara, but evidently fails to remember at “crunch time.”

We don’t have the time at this point to explore these terms further, but it should come as no surprise that, although gadol, ra, and qara will never be found together in the same verse again, they will each be paired with each other in various ways and to various degrees of proximity. They will also be paired at critical times with other key terms, such as yare (fear). Gadol, ra, and qara appear to be something like the skeleton of the work around which Jonah fashions the entire body of his message.

We are almost done, but alas I mentioned two notable exceptions to the big three terms right at the beginning. Let’s return to them here as we close: Yes, the top three terms used numerically are as we described– the big ones in verse 2. But this is actually not quite correct. Two other terms are used more. One kinda-sorta more (maybe!); the other considerably more. They are harder to spot because they don’t look like terms.

They are Elohim and YHVH. Elohim is used 15-17 times, depending upon how you want to look at things (Yup, I have to explain later.) Not surprisingly, YHVH, God’s personal name, is used 26 times–the most by far. We will break down their uses in a future musing, but for now it might be interesting to consider the fact that 4 of the 5 most important terms are mentioned in the opening of the book. The only one missing is Elohim even though it wouldn’t be difficult at all to include it. YHVH and Elohim are placed together three other times in the book, the most noteworthy of which is in Jonah’s declaration of his allegiance to his God (1:9). Is this absence intended to be a glaring absence?

Again for what it’s worth, if we toss out the two “funky” uses of “Elohim” in the book (again more later), it would mean that God’s unique name YHVH is the most used while Elohim and gadol would share second place equally. It makes you wonder: Are they not just numerically, but thematically related? Does Jonah not understand YHVH (who declared Himself before Moses in Exodus 34) because He doesn’t understand God as something Elohim and gadol? Maybe? In one and only one place in the book will these two terms be juxtaposed by the author Jonah. Again in a provocative, if not startling manner.

For Your Own Musing

1. Have you ever been confronted with something that struck you as truly great? What was that experience like? What is that moment in your walk with God where you most tasted or realized God’s greatness? Do you think its easy or difficult to conceive of God’s greatness in our modern, technologically advanced world? Why or why not? Do you do anything to remind yourself of His greatness?
2. Have you ever been confronted with something truly ra in your life? How do the different meanings of ra bear on this experience or others? Do you think that it is easy or difficult to truly understand ra, saturated as we are by constant images of ra around us? How so? How not?
3. Have you ever cried out to God in your life? What was that experience like? How did crying out to God change your life? Is crying out to God something that should be a regular part of our lives or not?